Perhaps one of the more popular topics of discussion amongst local political insiders at present is the emergence of a raft of Facebook Fan Pages claiming to support the Canberra Liberals sub-grouping, the Menzies Group.
For those not already familiar with the internal workings of the local Liberal Party, the Menzies Group is a rebel band of Canberra Liberals formed in the wake of the bitter pre-selection stoush between Gary Humphries and Zed Seselja last year.
Consisting of remnants of the so-called ‘Disaffected Rump’, the group was established by Humphries along with loyalist and former party president, Gary Kent, in order to challenge the growing dominance of the Conservative faction within the party who had been responsible for toppling Humphries.
Humphries himself had long been recognised as a leading figure of the Moderate arm of the Canberra Liberal Party. Since losing pre-selection for the top Senate spot on his party’s ticket, Humphries has continued to openly criticise his local branch for being too conservative on social policies and for allowing the gang of Young Libs loyal to Zed to effectively wreck the joint.
Fellow Menzies Group founder and former party president, Gary Kent, who was expelled from the party shortly after the Federal Election in 2013 for his outspoken comments during the pre-selection at the beginning of the year, is widely considered to have been targeted by the Seselja-controlled Management Committee due to his continual agitation over perceived failings of corporate governance by the Conservative Zed faction. After his expulsion Kent was highly critical when asked for his opinion on the party’s electoral prospects at the 2016 election.
Shortly after Kent’s expulsion towards the end of 2013 the youth wing of the party also fractured along the Humphries/Seselja divide, when a break-away group of ANU students loyal to Kent and Humphries left the established ANU Liberal Club to form their own campus society, the ANU Progressive Liberal Students’ Association (APLSA).
The momentum generated on campus by this new society is reported to have alarmed the Seselja-controlled Management Committee so greatly that steps were undertaken immediately to block any student from the ANU suspected to be associated with the APLSA from joining the Canberra Liberals so as to ensure these young Menzians would not disrupt Pax Seselja.
Frustration over the unreasonable delays processing these new signups led to division in the new society itself when sections of the APLSA Executive more closely aligned with Humphries failed to back a senior club member aligned with Kent during an internal dispute with the Young Libs loyal to Zed.
It is widely held in party circles that the young Kentsmen who left the society over this spat are behind the formation of the new suite of Menzies Group Fan Pages that have appeared this week.
Those pages associated with this new advent in Liberal factional brawling include;
Fightback – ACT Liberal Students Coalition
Canberra Liberals Support Page
Those established Liberal Party Facebook Fan Pages opposing the new entities appear to be;
ANU Progressive Liberal Students’ Association
Australian Liberal Students Federation
Recent news from the Kaine Report Fan Page, sympathetic to the Kent aligned Menzies Group Fan Page, indicates this web-based conflict between Kent and Humphries supporters appears to have spread to wrangling over ownership of the “official” Menzies Group email address.
This story can only get more interesting!
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What’s Your opinion?
21st Century Factionalism – Canberra Liberals Feuding Goes Digital
Honest_observer said :
Like you know who the New Menzies Group are then?
I noticed that about Police…odd. Something about hacking the Old Menzies Group email. I did have to laugh at the link to the AFP website from the Oldies, like really? Who does that? My understanding was the servers had to be in Australia for Police to do much about that anyways really. It is sort of like downloading copied movies, legal loop hole.
Whoever these New Menzies Groupers are they interest me. If the Libs have sicked the AFP onto them they must be serious business or completely deranged as Honest_observer thinks.
PowderedWhig said :
Nah, from stuff I’ve read on here I think that the old right wingers in the Liberal Clubs and young liberals, who crushed all the moderates back when I was involved ‘split’ at some point, had some silly feud, then there’s been some kind massive blow-up over the pre-selection mess, I don’t know. Not involved, haven’t been for years thank goodness. I just find it sad that the same thing is still going on, and while alliances have shifted and people have moved around, moved up, the endless infighting remains.
Gary Kent, Sesselja and Coe were all more or less still on the same page at the time of those stories.
It’s strange to see Kent’s supporters as ‘lefties’ though, because it was while he was president that moderates for the most part were driven out of the party, particularly younger folk.
I suppose they actual ideological right wingers were people like Coe, Zed and his ustaše stacks and particular people in the liberal club and young liberals, more than anything folks like Gary Kent just seemed to like being in charge for its own sake rather than to push any particular agenda.
I think Honest_observer is probably a uni student, maybe affiliated with the splitters, maybe a labor kid stirring the pot. This kind of stuff is kind of amusing… until you realize that it’s a major reason behind Canberra having had a Labor government for 13 years with no end in sight.
That the government is basically untouchable thanks to the dysfunction within the liberal party and fully cognizant of the fact really isn’t a good thing for Canberrans.
Just saying something smells a tad Fishy about it. Though that Kaine Report pages seems to indicate that a member of the Menzies group pre split has been reported to the police. I’m not annoyed at all. Anything with the local Laboral Party killing itself is always funny.
Honest_observer said :
The names are from Wikipedia, nick-names of 40’s gangsters. Ties in with the title of the folder, The Outfit.
I don’t think the New Menzies Group likes the Old Young Liberals any more than liking Zed.
Haha, this is so actually quite funny.
Tetranitrate said :
So the New Menzies Group has outed the Old Young Liberals and that is why Honest_observer is upset?
Very confused….
Postalgeek said :
Accepted. 🙂
Honest_observer said :
Well, they were created one day apart but I accept your point – coincidence, much? But this isn’t just one person as you seem to think as all these new pages combined have around 200 likes all up, the Canberra Libs only 100 more than that themselves (I checked). Plus there are comments on the Menzies page at least, unless that is just a crazy person talking with themselves?
I thought the names were pretty funny actually, don’t understand the significance of “The Artichoke King” but still amusing.
Being honest though, if someone put ridiculous photos of me on the net I’d probably be a bit cranky too.
PowderedWhig said :
I’ll put that misunderstanding down to my head cold.
Have a look at that Fightback and Menzies group pages. Both pages were made the same day and both have posted the photos of a number of party members with the worlds strangest names attached. Pretty sure that stuff like that is up their with talking to yourself and colleting a million cats in the slightly mad scale.
Postalgeek said :
Um, yeah Robert Menzies…I meant who are these Menzies Groupers behind the pages, not who was Menzies haha.
Honest_observer thinks we have a nutter on our hands. I didn’t see much of that anywhere, and the references to ‘hacking’ seemed a bit timid…sounds more like school yard antics.
The Australian Liberal Students Federation is the national liberal students body, it’s go nothing to do with this spat really.
I find it sad at this stuff is still going on, many of the same people just in different positions (a few finally out of the closet), factions have evolved and split and whatnot but it’s still the same level of ridiculous infighting that was going on when I was at uni.
http://the-riotact.com/kiddie-libs-in-forgery-or-foolery/7161
http://the-riotact.com/young-libs-take-control/7546
http://the-riotact.com/anu-liberal-club-up-to-old-games/11409
PowderedWhig said :
Is this a wind up? Where did you find the motivation to wade through that a long post concerning local Libs, their schisms, and their infighting, and not know who Menzies was?
Is Menzies a person or a group or both?
I find it hard to believe this is just one person playing around with 7 different pages. You are saying this Menzies created the new pages?
Menzies doesn’t seem to like Zed much anyways but he does appear to have a thing for Pogos.
So assume Menzies probably wrote this too then? Where does Gary Kent come in?
It isn’t that confusing. All the pages are the same person who is a little screwy.
Did anyone think that this “Menzies Group” was stable at all?
This is just confusing…as well as slightly ridiculous.
The Fightback page suggests the two ANU clubs don’t like each other, and the Progressives certainly don’t seem to like the Liberal Students Federation.
It is only the Progressives who have even mentioned Fightback on their page. But Fightback seems to think they are on the Progressives side against the ANU Liberals even though the Progressives don’t appear to want their help, while the ANU Liberals are just ignoring Fightback.
The Menzies Group page has posted a link to the Fightback page so they seem to be friendly but the Menzies Group page apparently isn’t friendly with another group who think they are also the Menzies Group. The Menzies Group page looks as though they are friendly with the Canberra Liberals Support page but the Support Page has liked a posted from the Progressives criticizing Fightback/Menzies, suggesting they are not friendly with these two pages.
The Kaine Report seems to lean more to Labor which makes it difficult to understand how they fit into all this, except for reposting leaks sent to them by someone from the Libs.
Can someone please explain what this all means? Who exactly is fight who and why are they doing it on Facebook?